Images to Display the Main Points So Far

By reading the human impacts on Antarctica, it can be difficult to picture what’s actually going on. In my blog, I have tried to make the posts as visual as I can, because this illustrates the extent of the issues I have discussed. Particularly because Antarctica is remote and relatively uninhabited, I have used maps to show where the places I talk about are.

Having said this, I feel like illustrations need their own post so today, I will be presenting a range of photographs that relate to the main issues I have mentioned so far: tourism, waste, entanglement and krill.

Figure 1.

Clean up operation of an abandoned landfill site at Thala Valley. The site was used from the 1960s to 1980s. An Australian research station dumped approximately 1,000 tonnes of soil here, which contains remains of used batteries and machinery. Source: Royal Society of Chemistry (2007)

Figure 2.

Freshly caught krill. Source: Australian government: Department of the Environment, Antarctic Division (2012)

Figure 3.

Researcher carefully taking a sample from a contaminated site. Source: Australian government: Department of the Environment, Antarctic Division (2012)

Figure 4.

Tourists enjoying the company of an Emperor penguin chick. Source: Wikipedia (2009)

Figure 5

Runner from the Antarctic Marathon smiling at a penguin. Source: B Positive Project (2013)

Figure 6.

Source: Peabody Essex Museum (2008)

Figure 7.

Diver among krill. Source: Sarano and Duran (2010) ‘Oceans:Official Companion to the Disney Feature Film’

Figure 8.

350 foreign officials attend an Annual Antarctic Treaty Conference in Uruguay in 2010. Main discussions included tourism, climate change and sovereignty. Source: Merco Press (2010)

Before I end this post, I'd like to recommend a couple of blogs and websites that have a good selection of photos that I would encourage my readers to take a look at. Firstly, Flickr's Antarctica page has a great range of pictures taken by tourist, and can be accessed by clicking here. Secondly, I came across a website called Wild Nature Images which has many photographs posted on their website, and can be accessed by clicking here.